2507 - How Covid Radicalized American Politics w/ Taylor Lorenz

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: 2507 - How Covid Radicalized American Politics w/ Taylor Lorenz
Release Date: May 29, 2025
Host: Sam Seder
Guest: Taylor Lorenz, Tech Journalist

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Introduction

In Episode 2507 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Sam Seder is joined by renowned tech journalist Taylor Lorenz. The episode delves deep into the transformative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on American politics, exploring how the crisis reshaped governmental policies, public sentiment, and the broader political landscape.

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Economic Shifts Post-Covid

The discussion kicks off with an overview of the significant economic changes triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Taylor Lorenz emphasizes how 2020 was a pivotal year where the U.S. government enacted unprecedented policies to support its citizens.

• Government Intervention: Lorenz highlights key legislative actions such as the CARES Act and the Family's First Coronavirus Response Act (FCRA), which provided direct financial assistance, extended unemployment benefits, and mandated paid sick leave. She notes, "These policies were so progressive, I actually can't even imagine now, which is again because of the downstream effects of all of this propaganda trying to make us forget this stuff" (26:38).

• State-Level Initiatives: States like New Mexico implemented free childcare and universal free school meal programs, significantly reducing food insecurity and lifting thousands out of poverty.

• Economic Recovery and Contraction: Despite these measures, by the first quarter of 2025, the U.S. GDP shrank by 0.2%, marking the first contraction in three years. Consumer spending also reached its lowest point in three years, underscoring the fragile economic recovery.

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Political Radicalization and Tariffs

A substantial portion of the episode focuses on the federal trade court's ruling against former President Trump's unilateral tariff policies.

• Court Ruling: The three-judge panel deemed Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese products as exceeding his authority (06:58). This decision did not nullify the tariffs but imposed stricter conditions, requiring national security grounds and comprehensive investigations for further tariffs.

• Trump's Reaction: A clip of Trump responding to the ruling underscores his frustration. When questioned about the "Taco Trade"—a term coined by the Financial Times referring to his inconsistent tariff policies—Trump vehemently denies the accusation, stating, "Country. We had a country." (13:08).

• Economic Implications: The tariffs led to mixed economic outcomes. While Wall Street saw a rebound, the broader economy suffered, with significant negative impacts on consumer spending and GDP.

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The Role of Internet Culture and Memes

Taylor Lorenz introduces the concept of how internet culture, particularly memes, has become a barometer for political and social sentiment.

• "Somebody Needs to Do It" Memes: Lorenz analyzes the disturbing trend of memes advocating for the assassination of Donald Trump, attributing their rise to deep-seated political anger and nihilism fostered by the pandemic's aftermath (26:42).

• Nostalgia and Collective Memory: She reflects on how the government's swift and substantial interventions during the pandemic showcased a level of solidarity and collective action that has since been forgotten or dismissed due to pervasive propaganda and misinformation.

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Public Health and Labor Issues

The episode delves into the intersection of public health policies and labor rights, highlighting the regression from collective health measures to individualistic approaches.

• Pandemic Response and Retraction: Lorenz points out that the expansive public health measures during the pandemic—such as enhanced SNAP benefits, Medicaid expansion, and housing stability programs—were rolled back, leading to increased economic insecurity and health anxieties.

• Impact on Workers: The lack of continued protections has had dire consequences for workers, especially in sectors like healthcare and education. Lorenz mentions, "We need things like paid sick leave, better healthcare, and upgraded ventilation to reduce community spread" (37:09).

• Labor Organizing: The resurgence of unionization efforts, as seen with Whole Foods and Amazon workers, is discussed as a response to the diminished protections and escalating workplace hazards.

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Censorship and Online Speech

A critical part of the conversation addresses the evolving landscape of online speech and the efforts by both political parties to regulate and control internet discourse.

• Democrat Alignment with Censorship: Taylor Lorenz criticizes both Democrats and Republicans for their attempts to censor online speech, noting that "Democrats have aligned themselves with Trump on very much censoring online speech" (54:59). She emphasizes the need to protect civil liberties online to prevent authoritarian overreach.

• AI and Misinformation: The potential misuse of AI in generating misleading content, as referenced by Lorenz, raises alarms about the future of information integrity. She warns, "We're allowing the government to pass sweeping censorship laws that censor legitimate speech" (55:16).

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Rise of Nihilism and Individualism

The episode explores how the rollback of collective policies has fostered a sense of nihilism and heightened individualism among Americans.

• Economic Despair and Coping Mechanisms: With the dissolution of safety nets, many individuals have turned to schemes like cryptocurrency in a bid to secure financial stability, often leading to further economic instability.

• Cultural Shifts: Lorenz observes a cultural shift towards a "YOLO" mentality, where short-term gains are sought in the face of a perceived unchangeable and rigged system. This sentiment is exacerbated by the rise of online scams and the allure of quick wealth through platforms like OnlyFans.

• Memes as Outlet for Anger: The proliferation of violent and nihilistic memes reflects and fuels this disillusionment, creating a feedback loop of frustration and radicalization.

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Conclusions and Future Outlook

In wrapping up the conversation, Taylor Lorenz stresses the importance of recognizing the potential for collective action to effect change, drawing lessons from the 2020 pandemic response. She calls for renewed solidarity and public pressure to reclaim and uphold progressive policies.

• Call to Action: Lorenz urges listeners to engage more actively in online and offline activism to counteract the growing individualism and to advocate for public health and economic reforms.

• AI and Regulation: She highlights the critical need for intelligent legislation that addresses the nuanced challenges of AI and online speech without stifling legitimate discourse.

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Notable Quotes

• "These policies were so progressive, I actually can't even imagine now, which is again because of the downstream effects of all of this propaganda trying to make us forget this stuff." – Taylor Lorenz (26:38)

• "This is the epitome of the Trump administration. That's what they're doing in practice, but it's also what they engendered in the public." – Sam Seder (48:17)

• "We're in a state of exception. Tim Poole said some academics said we're in seventh generational warfare and Canada's flooding us with fentanyl." – Matt Binder (10:42)

• "Covid and the pandemic is the biggest labor issue of our time, and it has just been ignored to force people back to work in unsafe working conditions." – Taylor Lorenz (38:31)

• "The Internet allows us to challenge the mainstream media narratives, challenge the government, and we need to fight for our civil liberties online." – Taylor Lorenz (53:16)

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Majority Report provides a comprehensive analysis of the profound and lasting impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on American politics and society. Through Taylor Lorenz's insightful commentary, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between government policy, economic shifts, internet culture, and the rise of individualism and nihilism. The conversation underscores the urgent need for collective action and intelligent policy-making to navigate the challenges of the post-pandemic era.

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Timestamps Reference

• 26:38 - Taylor Lorenz discusses the progressive nature of 2020 policies.
• 06:58 - Court ruling against Trump's tariff authority.
• 13:08 - Clip of Trump responding to "Taco Trade" label.
• 26:42 - Introduction to the role of internet memes in political sentiment.
• 37:09 - Impact of lack of pandemic protections on workers.
• 54:59 - Taylor Lorenz critiques bipartisan efforts to censor online speech.
• 55:16 - Concerns about AI and misinformation.
• 10:42 - Matt Binder discusses the economic tensions and policy impacts.
• 38:31 - Taylor Lorenz on Covid as a labor issue.
• 48:17 - Sam Seder on public sentiment and Trump administration.
• 53:16 - Taylor Lorenz on online speech and censorship.

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Note: The timestamps correspond to the specific moments in the transcript where the quoted statements were made.

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

You are listening to a free version of Majority Report with Sam Steder. To support this show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to Majority FM please.

[Matt Binder]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday, May 29, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Taylor Lorenz will be with us, tech journalist to talk about some of her work, including this piece that I loved recently about how 2020, Covid, etc. Changed our politics forever. Also on the program, a federal trade court panel rules that Trump cannot implement tariffs unilaterally using an emergency authority, which prompts a stock market rebound. U.S. gDP shrank by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2025, the first contraction in three years. Consumer spending is also at its weakest in three years. Are Elon and Trump breaking up? Musk leaves D.C. with an $100 million IOU for Trump's super PACs that he's yet to make good on.

[Matt Binder]

Stephen Miller's wife with him.

[Emma Vigeland]

Elon's a little peeved that Sam Altman and David Sachs got an AI deal with the UAE that Trump brokered. Isn't that because it's enriching his kids? Or is that the other corrupt deal I can't keep track? Trump? Oh, no, no. It's Witkoff's son that's working with Eric on, on a, on the AI thing, right?

[Matt Binder]

I've not heard.

[Emma Vigeland]

I, I got a tit. Put a pin in that, folks. Trump demands that any deal with Iran would allow the U.S. to destroy, quote, whatever we want of its nuclear sites. Which sounds like a poison pill to me. Rubio targets the visas of hundreds of thousands of Chinese students learning in the United States.

[Matt Binder]

Despicable.

[Emma Vigeland]

Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, opens an investigation into Trump's petition pay to play meme coin dinner. RFK Jr's Maha report cites a study on anxiety meds and antidepressants that does not exist.

[Matt Binder]

Wonder how that happened. Has anything to do with AI or already mentioned, right?

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, God, it's. We're doing health policy with AI Slope.

[Matt Binder]

Of course you expect them to do actual research.

[Emma Vigeland]

He also, by the way, RFK canceled a $600 million Moderna contract that was developing a bird flu vaccine. Polling on the abundance agenda versus taxing the rich spells some bad things for the abundance libs. Turns out people like the taxing the rich part More what do you know?

[Matt Binder]

No, tell us more about bottlenecks.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's we're gonna bottleneck our way to the White House in 2028. Wired reports that U.S. customs and Border Patrol is collecting the biometric data of tens of thousands of migrant children. Seems pretty bad. And lastly, at least four Palestinians were killed at an aid distribution site in Gaza. Tens more killed in strikes on, what do you know, refugee camps as well. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It's an em Majority Report Thursday. I'm very excited to talk to Taylor Lorenz, who is a buddy of mine. We haven't, I feel like had a conversation on the Majority Report before, so felt this was a great opportunity to bring her on. People should check out her YouTube channel and podcasts, but we'll get into that with her in just a bit. Hello, Russ. Hello, Matt.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, you're saying that thing about the biometric data and I just want to do a quick plug. I had Alex Skopik on to talk about this piece on left wrecking a while ago, but Nazis on aisle nine. It goes into corporate collaboration with the Hitler's Nazi regime, goes far beyond IBM. But that's the important point is it's not ICE or DHS that's designing the systems to capture all this biometric data. It's people like Palantir and these private contractors. And we act like we learned some sort of lesson from like, oh, IBM got shamed for that. All these companies kind of got off scot free, right, for participating in one of the worst crimes of the 20th century. And now they're participating in, you know, 21st century crimes.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, what about the cars that are on our roads that got off pretty scot free for being Volkswagen? Volkswagen what? Mercedes Benz too. Collaborators with the Nazis. We have modern day collaborators in this current time. You could see our tech overlords and like say the, as Matt says, like Palantir and the AI weapons technology that's being used by say the Israeli military right now. One of their programs, Daddy's Home, which says if they've sort of identified a male that may be a Hamas militant, we're to use this AI program to kill dozens of people in the house or the apartment complex.

[Matt Binder]

Regardless, Microsoft employees saying emails with Gaza, Palestine or genocide won't send. And remember all the stuff about, ooh, you had to be the best and the brightest to work at these places. Well, they got a lot of these great people and now they're suppressing them from exercising their conscience.

[Emma Vigeland]

But in more or in less dystopian news, or at least we can kind of have a party as the world burns. Just a momentary respite. Donald Trump yesterday was dealt a significant blow to his unilateral tariff policy. The U.S. court of International Trade ruled via a three judge panel that included one Reagan, one Trump and one Obama judge on it. Obviously all communists. Right. We're all in agreement.

[Matt Binder]

The far left.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, okay. And the antifa panel ruled that basically his invocation of this, like unilateral tariff policy, quote, exceeds any authority granted under the Emergency Powers Law that he's using. This is significant because he has used the International Emergency Economic Powers act, which is a 1977 law, to invoke a majority of his tariffs, like the unilateral ones from Liberation Day. Essentially, that's the 25% duties on Canadian and Mexican products that he imposed, the 20% tariff on Chinese products, which he says is because of a fentanyl emergency. This is the same authority I believe that he used for both Canada and Mexico because supposedly about fentanyl. Right, right, right. We know that a great majority of our fentanyl comes through illegal ports of entry. But like he has to, much like his invocation of the Alien Enemies act to round up and deport people, he has to use emergency declarations to justify any of these actions. And his tariff policy was based on that same kind of framework and a battle plan, if you will, by his administration. And so this, the statute that he was using requires a national emergency to be declared. And that was part of what this three judge panel was incredibly skeptical of the idea that he has the authority to, to do this. And now you see Republicans crying about this. I saw Charlie Kirk was very upset that no, he does have the authority. He does. They're all leftist losers or whatever. He can use it under the Trade Expansion act of 1962. This ruling does not nullify those tariffs, but those tariffs are a lot more narrow because they have to be imposed. One, on national security grounds. It's not an emergency declaration. Two, these are the tariffs that he implemented in March, the ones on steel and aluminum that are more directed towards the auto industry. That has to be implemented after there's been an investigation and it's a slower process. You have to investigate whether or not this is the right thing to do. There's a lot of paperwork. You have to conduct a national security review and. And you also have to solicit public comment to use that particular law. To implement tariffs. The 1962 Trade Expansion Act. Trump doesn't want to do that. Right. Like the immigration stuff, like the tariff stuff. All of his power is. He's attempting to utilize it in the way that cements his authority and expands his power as the executive. So not using the checks and balances that are both in the statute, but are also constitutionally written for the executive branch, he's attempting to supersede those. And in part, he likes the tariffs just because he's insane and the immigration stuff, but there's the other part of, like, him testing those bounds in and of itself is an end that he's trying to achieve.

[Matt Binder]

We're in a state of exception. Tim Poole said some academics said we're in seventh generational warfare and Canada's flooding us with fentanyl. And until you do it, you know, we're going to tax your lumber.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And David Dayan wrote a good piece about that this morning, and he was saying, like, yeah, the president does have the authority to. Well, technically, presidents don't have the authority from the Constitution to impose tariffs, but Basically, for around 100 years, Congress has allowed the president to do so deferred to the executive.

[Matt Binder]

Same way like Obama got trade. What was it, TPA status to do the Trans Pacific Partnership in his final years, like, Congress has been fine. You can do this until, like, someone insane gets in there.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

And starts messing up stuff for their donors.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. And so, but, but to, to put it even more succinctly, like, Day and said he has broad authority to do this based on what you're saying, Matt. But Trump just used the illegal one because he. Because the point is trying to cement his power, expand the power of the executive, make himself more like a dictator than like a traditional president. This is the unitary executive theory. And he chose the illegal course of action for that reason. And so now he's throwing a fit. He was upset about this. The White House has petitioned the court, and they want to try to continue to use this authority to impose tariffs. We'll see what the Supreme Court does. But since it was unanimous and, I don't know, pretty. I felt like the ruling was pretty bulletproof. We'll see how the Supreme Court responds. Like, they also represent capital, and capitalists are not happy about the tariffs, which.

[Matt Binder]

Is like, kind of the big problem.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. But it's bad for all of us. Right?

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

So we're in it with them in this narrow instance. Here's Trump being asked about how Wall street has been speaking about him and his Tariff policy. And he gets really off. Apparently this, the Financial Times coined this acronym called Taco, which stands for Trump always chickens out. And a reporter asked him about this. Wall street analysts have coined a new term called the Taco trade. They're saying, Trump always chickens out on.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Your tariff threats and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?

[Donald Trump]

I kick out.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Chicken out.

[Donald Trump]

Oh, isn't that chicken out? I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I set down to 100 and then down to another number and I said, you have to open up your whole country. And because I, I gave the European Union a 50% tax tariff. And they called up and they said, please, let's meet right now. Please, let's meet right now. And I said, okay, I'll give you till July. I actually asked them, I said, what's to date? Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, we'll meet anytime you want. And we have an end date of July 9th. You call that chickening out? Because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing. When Biden didn't have practically anything Biden, this country was dying. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia, the king told me, he said, you got the hottest. We have the hottest country in the world right now.

[Emma Vigeland]

What?

[Donald Trump]

Six months ago, this country was stoned so dead.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay, I'm sorry.

[Donald Trump]

Country. We had a country.

[Matt Binder]

People didn't think that's like pretty much the opposite. You could just read the, the like. Actually the Financial Times, who coined Taco Trump always chickens out, which dangerous coinage, I think. But the, the FT was talking about the economy during Biden's lame duck period as the envy of the entire world. Everyone else, Europe was struggling. Everyone was, everyone wanted. Was putting money into American companies because they expected Trump to get in and basically just allow massive amounts of mergers and acquisitions. And, and instead what he did is blow up the economy with these stupid tariffs. Like, the economy was. American economy was roaring. Look at any financial press in Biden's lame duck period. And it was crushing.

[Emma Vigeland]

And that's. It doesn't mean that, like people's rent was available. Rent is as high as it's ever been. We just hit a record of credit card debt. People are going to. Our student loan defaults are just restarting on people's credit scores. Like, for everyday people, the economy was, it was a bit of a paper tiger right or whatever. The. I don't know, but the tigers sounds more aggressive, but you know what I'm trying to say, like speculators, economy. Yes.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

But for their metrics, for the metrics of the ruling class, they. It was undoubtedly in a much better situation under the Biden administration, and it's a direct result of these tariffs. US GDP, I headline this shrank for the first time in three years since the first quarter of 2022, which was when we were still recovering from COVID It's been. It had been expanding since then. Consumer spending is also at its weakest since this period. So he's just lying. But I don't know, we should try to use. Trump always chickens out. Like Trump always chickens out on. On not sending arms to Israel. I mean, he always chickens out on blocking arms to Israel.

[Matt Binder]

That is interesting.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Stop chickening out on sanctioning Israel.

[Matt Binder]

I was telling Russ it kind of worries me because it's kind of like when Chris Murphy was like, actually, he's not even deported that many people. Like, you're challenging him to do the actual thing we don't want him to do. But okay, fine. If we can make it about chinkering out of standing up to Bibi Netanyahu.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

Fine. Then. Then we could do it.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, keep going. I should note also that Jeanine Pirro is standing right behind him.

[Matt Binder]

Pretty still. To her honor.

[Emma Vigeland]

Her honor the judge.

[Donald Trump]

Now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia. The king told me, let's talk about temperature. You got the hottest. We have the hottest country in the world right now. Six months ago, this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that, it's called negotiation. You set a number, and if you go down, you know, if I set a number at a ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit, they want me to hold that number. 145% tariff even. I said, man, that really got up. You know how it got. Because of fentanyl and many other things. And you added, I'm lying about. I said, where are we now? We're at 145%. I said, Whoa, that's high. That's high. They were doing no business.

[Matt Binder]

You're in charge.

[Donald Trump]

They were having a lot of problems. We were very nice to China. I don't know if they're going to be nice to us, but we were very nice to China. And in many ways, I think we really helped China tremendously because, you know, they were having great difficulty because we were basically going cold turkey with China. We were doing no business because of the tariff, because it was so high. Yeah, but I knew that. But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. Go ahead.

[Emma Vigeland]

Don't ever say I chicken. Now.

[Taylor Lorenz]

First of all, how dare you?

[Emma Vigeland]

First of all, like, come on. I want. I'm actually now I'm even more convinced that we need to make Taco into something more productive.

[Matt Binder]

It's dangerous because not only does it call Trump basically a wimp, but it's also sort of Mexican culture, which is going to aggravate his racism. I feel like it's. I don't know. If we come back and it's 200 tariffs on everyone in the entire world next week, you know, I guess we have to think of the ft.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Although he does like Taco Bell. Although probably not as much as. As McDonald's, but in any event, the best is yet to come.

[Donald Trump]

God did that. I believe that.

[Matt Binder]

I totally believe that.

[Emma Vigeland]

I totally believe in God. All right, in a moment, we'll be speaking to Taylor Lorenz. But first, a word from some of our sponsors. You know that going online without Express VPN is like leaving your blinds open at night. Anybody can watch what you're doing and you have no idea who might be out there lurking in the dark. Thanks to ExpressVPN for supporting the Majority report. That goes well for a while. Visit expressvpn.com majority and you can get an extra four months free because all of your traffic flows through their servers. Internet service providers and mobile network providers know every single website you visit. And in the US, ISPs are legally allowed to sell that information to advertisers. That is not good. Esp. ExpressVPN. Yeah, not great. We should probably regulate that. But for now we have ExpressVPN.

[Taylor Lorenz]

How dare you.

[Emma Vigeland]

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[Taylor Lorenz]

We are back.

[Emma Vigeland]

And we are joined now by Taylor Lorenz, tech journalist, author of the best selling book Extremely Online the Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet, host of Power User, the podcast, and founder of the tech and online culture newsletter User Magazine. Taylor, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Thanks for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

So you have this video on your YouTube channel entitled Somebody Needs to Do it, which is a reference to the widespread memes that we do not endorse at all, jokingly referring to Trump's assassination. And we should be abundantly clear, abundancely clear, that your analysis isn't endorsing these memes or encouraging them in the slightest. Neither am I. But it is examining, like the political fury behind them. And let's just take a listen to a few minutes of your work on this. I really would encourage people to watch the whole video, but I found this section just to be kind of indicative of a lot of what you had to say in the video. And I wanted to play that for.

[Taylor Lorenz]

A little bit for, for people.

[Emma Vigeland]

So we'll start here.

[Taylor Lorenz]

About exactly how and when millions of people lost faith in the system. This was not an overnight phenomenon. There were pivotal events over the past few years that pushed people to this moment. And I don't think that you can look at the someone should do it memes without examining the major cultural and political turning points that we've recently lived through. To begin with, we have to go back to March 2020 when Covid hit. And before you tune out, because I said the word Covid, listen to me. The year is actually a time in history that the entire US Government, the mainstream media, and pretty much everyone in power has spent billions and billions of dollars waging a massive propaganda war to try to make you forget. And that propaganda campaign has worked on a lot of you because the period in time that most of America has memory hold was actually pretty revolutionary. In the early months of spring 2020, when Covid began to spread, the US witnessed a momentary glimpse into a more equitable society. The entire US Government was taking care of its people in ways that it hadn't before. The US Government has spent so many years since blasting the public with propaganda that a lot of people today have forgotten just how revolutionary 2020 was. Policies that we were always told were absolutely impossible in America suddenly came to fruition. I want to go through a few notable ones there was the CARES act, enacted in March 2020, which provided direct financial assistance to struggling workers by extending unemployment benefits and offering an additional 600 do dollars per week. The family's first Coronavirus Response act, which also passed in 2020, mandated paid sick leave and increased funding for food assistance programs, lifting countless people out of poverty. On a state level in 2020, states like New Mexico began offering free childcare, a policy that lifted approximately 120,000 people above the poverty line. The state even began taking budget surplus directly from oil and gas revenue to fund early childhood education. This stuff was so progressive, I actually can't even imagine now, which is again because of the downstream effects of all of this propaganda trying to make us forget this stuff. Other states, including Connecticut, implemented universal free school meal programs, ensuring that all students had access to hot, nutritious meals, regardless of income. For the first time, these policies and dozens more resulted in a significant reduction of food insecurity across America. In 2020, SNAP benefits were increased and helped feed over 15 million young people. From 2020 to 2021, the expansion of food programs across the resulted in 2.4 million households no longer being food insecure. I can't explain how life changing this stuff was for millions and millions of people in America. And people weren't just being fed. Millions were also suddenly able to get health care. In 2020, the government made it easier than ever to enroll in Medicare and Medicaid, which resulted in millions of people who had been previously unable to afford health insurance suddenly able to get care. The government invested $145 million in expanding telehealth services, meaning millions of disabled and housebound people could finally access care, some for the first time in decades. In 2020, housing insecurity plummeted thanks to federal policies like The Treasury Department's ERA program, which provided over $46 billion to support housing stability for renters. There was a nationwide eviction moratorium, and the government rolled out a suite of tenant protections. California, actually, where I live, helped thousands of previously unhoused people gain access to permanent housing. I don't want to go on too much, but these are just a sliver of the policies that we saw the government enact during the early days of the pandemic. And they showed everyone in America, for the first time ever, what was actually possible if we allocated just a fraction of the billions and billions of billions of dollars that we spend on the military and things like tax cuts for the rich towards the public good.

[Emma Vigeland]

So that was just such a phenomenal summation of things that we have, as you say, memory hold about what our politics looked like in that period. Just writing down some of the things that you the themes of like what the government provided for people, increased snap, which the Republicans are now slashing. And on a regular, in a regular month. Snap, I think feeds 40 million Americans and helps with their food insecurity. You talk about there how 15 million more were added and were allowed to use SNAP to alleviate some of their food insecurity. Health care, Medicaid expansion being escalating during that period. States that had previously rejected it because it was Obama socialism needing to do so. Now the Republicans are trying to cut that housing, the eviction moratorium. People understanding that like housing doesn't have to be this way. And right now rent is the highest it's ever been. In the wake of that, these are just three enormously important elements of. And of course Covid with health care and the effects of that enormously important things in our politics that just within a year it seems like the conversation around them, at least for Americans, completely transformed.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah, I mean, but it transformed. And what I want people to understand is this was intentional. Like, I think a lot of people were so excited to quote, unquote, get back to normal that they bought into far right pandemic denialism and essentially once the vaccines came out, convinced themselves that they wanted to go back to quote, unquote, normal as in the world before 2020, and not, not advocate for any of these ongoing protections. Because to advocate for a lot of these ongoing protections would require acknowledging that the pandemic is ongoing, which it is, and they wanted to, and I understand that impulse, but they just sort of retreated back into individualism. And what I try to outline in my video is that this pandemic denialism that frankly has taken hold in the left and among liberals, like very much driven by liberals. And the right, of course, which has always been denialist about the pandemic, sort of set the stage for this like memory holding and that we should not only acknowledge the ongoing pandemic, we have literally a new variant that people are saying causes razor blade throat right now that that's hitting America. But also that, yeah, we should look back at that time and be like, wait a minute, why did we let that stuff end? That that was like a good time. And I, I made this video after seeing a bunch of tiktoks, not just about the somebody's got to do it meme, but about nostalgia for 2020 and being like, why is life so hard now? Like, I'm nostalgic for 2020 when, like, I, I had it just for like a minute, like a slightly easier right.

[Emma Vigeland]

And when you talk about COVID denialism, too, it really, I think, underscores some of these new kind of insidious elements in the Republican Party and in the Trump 2.0 administration. RFK Jr. As a figure, of course, his popularity exploded during that time period. And for me, I have been framing this to people about, like. Like this is because people have an. A fundamental anxiety about their health care. And I think that anxiety, of course, exploded during COVID because we don't guarantee healthcare as a right in this country. And so it leaves the door wide open for charlatans to say, as long as you take my supplement, you're going to be okay, undercutting the notion of public health, because what is public health if we don't have public health care?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Exactly. And I, I also think, like, what RFK selling is. Selling is, is just a little bit more extreme version of individualism that, frankly, the Democrats sold the public on in 2021. In 2020, we had enormous solidarity. There was this idea of, I'm not just masking to protect myself. I'm masking to protect you and other people from this deadly and dangerous airborne disease. Then they sort of gaslit the public into saying, masking is a personal choice, that we don't get personal air. Airborne disease is real. Air is shared. We could clean the air. We could make sure that schools are safe, workplaces are safe. Now they're banning masks. They won't even let workers protect themselves. Covid and the pandemic is the biggest labor issue of our time, and it has just been ignored to force people back to work in unsafe working conditions. We should have learned lessons about airborne disease and implemented mitigations. And now most people, as you're saying, have this deeply individualistic view of public health where they don't view. They don't view that it's their response, responsibility to keep anyone else safe. Like, they just want to be able to go about their life and think, exactly like you said, if I buy the right supplement, I can sort of, like, purchase my way, you know, into health. And in some ways you can, right? Obviously, the more money you have, the better health outcomes you have. But getting disease is not good. Getting disease repeatedly, even if you're vaccinated for that disease, is not good. It doesn't build your immune system. It's the opposite. And so I think, like, you know, a lot of people have, but they've internalized this idea of, like, get back to work, don't complain, sorry that you're sick now seven or eight times a year more than you were before the pandemic, because your immune system's been damaged. But, you know, you're not getting, as you mentioned, you're not getting any time off, you're not getting any paid sick leave anymore. And the entire political system has set the stage for that. I don't think RFK could be doing what he could be doing now if Americans weren't already primed to have this individualistic view of health.

[Emma Vigeland]

And the Philadelphia Whole Foods workers and the Amazon workers who started of their unionization efforts in the wake of the pandemic explicitly cited the lack of pandemic protections and Covid protections as something that galvanized them to demand more from their workplace. And you can see a very clear story when you also see the reaction to, you know, how, like, business owners wanted people to get back to work immediately. And now you're seeing even, like, like, punitive measures that are being employed in cities like San Francisco to force people back into the office because, hey, we're concerned about the value of commercial real estate. And this high rise is worth, like, it is. This is how capitalism affects public health and people's personal health.

[Taylor Lorenz]

And it's forcing. What drives me crazy is that all these people were so desperate to believe the propaganda that Covid just magically disappeared and somehow isn't harmful anymore. Diseases are harmful again, get vaccinated, but being vaccinated does not, like, prevent necessarily every. You know, unfortunately, we don't have sterilizing vaccines. Right. So you can still get infected when you're vaccinated. It's very common. We never demanded protections. And as you said, a lot of labor organizers did. I say we as in like the collective public. And many people with large platforms on the left have pushed this denialism. They haven't said, hey, look, our workers will go back to work when you have air filtration, when you have air monitors, when we have paid sick leave, when we have free and easy access to COVID testing and testing for all, you know, measles and all the other diseases that are coming back. Instead, it's just get back to work. And the most insidious thing I've seen with healthcare workers, too, where they're forcing healthcare workers back to work without ppe. I was just in the hospital this past weekend and the doctors were saying that they can't, you know, basically they're encouraged not to wear masks and they have all these signs that say, we want to see your smile. Disgusting. These are, you know, these are people that are treating immunocompromised people, disabled people. And these healthcare workers are being told. Nurses are being told not to mask.

[Emma Vigeland]

How about the teachers, right? I mean, the teachers unions.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Oh, my God.

[Emma Vigeland]

I heard Pete Buttigieg on a podcast, what was it, a few days ago? Maybe we can find that and we can talk. You have it. Oh, there you go, Matt. Thank you. Maybe we just play this because, as you're saying, this is a bipartisan, unfortunately, effort to create this level of denial. This was what Pete Buddha judge said he would change if he could go back in time in 2020. He was on the podcast with that guy Tim Miller. I'm forgetting the name of his show, but the Bulwark. The Bulwark. This answer is disqualifying.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, we're gonna go back to like right after Biden gets the nomination in 2020. So, you know, you just endorsed him and you're Pete from today and you get to talk to Pete from back then. What do you think y' all should have done differently?

[Sam Cedar]

One, for the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner. We got very knee jerk about this. And the costs were not just politically, but in a profound way. I think for the generation, the costs were profound. And I think anybody who's involved, who was, by the way, obviously doing their best to deal with a crisis that killed a million Americans.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Sure.

[Sam Cedar]

But I think most people involved would like to be able to have found a way to safely get more schools more open more quickly.

[Matt Binder]

That was a great first answer.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, I'm sure you think that.

[Matt Binder]

Very specific. Find a way.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Taylor Lorenz]

I love how he says the first thing that he says is the cost politically. Yeah, that's the first thing that he says.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep. Go ahead, Taylor, You're. I mean, you're. The floor is yours.

[Taylor Lorenz]

It's infuriating because again, he's feeding into this right wing narrative that we didn't go further enough. Trump, or, sorry, Biden already enacted policies that were further to the right of Trump when he took office. He forced everyone back to work. He. They misled the public greatly about the vaccines and their ability to sterilize. Like they said that Covid. You can't get Covid. That was the. We were. I just want everyone to. Julia Doubleday, who's a fantastic writer, she has the gauntlet, which is a wonderful subset that's covered all this. She's really detailed it so well. But And I remember this myself with my job. The reason you were allowed to go back to work if you were vaccinated was because they were. They believed at the time, or who knows how much they knew, but that you could not get Covid if you were vaccinated. So therefore, it was safe. By the summer of 2021, we already knew that that was true. And there was rampant breakthrough infections and breakthrough deaths. And there was no re evaluation of the policy. It was just like, nope. We said, get back to work. And it's like. But you said, get back to work because it was safe, and it's not safe. And you're not putting any protections in place, especially in schools, which are a primary driver of COVID spread. Because here's the thing. Although children respond to disease slightly better, children still get long Covid. Repeatedly infecting them with a neuroinvasive, you know, immune system damaging virus is not. Not good for a child, even if they're vaccinated. Not to mention many parents are not vaccinating their children. But old people work at schools, elderly people, teachers, lunch ladies, administrators. And those kids, when they get sick, they bring disease home and infect and kill their, you know, their parents or their caregivers or disable them. And so again, we just. And we need to stop thinking of deaths. I'm so glad that deaths are down. Of course, we've killed off almost all the most vulnerable people right in the early days of the pandemic.

[Emma Vigeland]

But disability, as an aside, Buttigieg points out. Oh, a million people died.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah, right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Just.

[Taylor Lorenz]

That's an afterthought. And by the way, most of them died under Biden because Biden oversaw the biggest wave of COVID when he just let it rip when they said vulnerable people will fall by the wayside and die. And there was no public outcry about that. There was no backlash. And I just want to stress this is why people need to have solidarity with disabled people and recognize this as a labor issue. This is a major workers rights issue. You know, my brother works at a bar. He got Covid at work. That you can't protect yourself when you're working in some of these places. And so we need things like, you know, if you're not gonna be able to mask everywhere, right, like eateries and things, upgrade the ventilation test. Like, there are things we can do to reduce community spread. I'm not saying everyone needs to have an N95 strapped to their face at all time. Again, that's a very individualistic solution. Yes. Masking is solidarity. Masking itself is not individualistic. You are, you know, protecting others. But, but we can't only rely on things like that. We need to have paid sick leave, better health care and upgraded ventilation and free testing and all of these other things that have made it that it's safer in other countries than it is here.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. And then just to then kind of bring it back overall to some of the other parts of your thesis here, because you're mentioning all of things that the government could do to help the collective, that this could be a country that's not just this bootstraps, individualist approach to health care, but one that has, like, government intervention to deal with a crisis. But. Well, Covid was a crisis. You had government intervention. You had a crisis is a crisis. I'm sorry. Thank you for correcting me on that. The, the. It's a crisis. The, the, the expansion of the child tax credit, the eviction moratorium, all of those policies showed people what the government could do. Right. It was this demonstration of the government's power where we've been told in this country for quite a while that the government is the problem. And so you also talk about how when that went away and the Biden and Biden and Joe Manchin. Right. Like, there was not the prioritization of the extension. Well, Biden did try to extend the child tax credit, but Joe Manchin kills it. And then what can we do but.

[Matt Binder]

Kills it in a gross way, like basically trotting out tropes of, I mean, the lazy people and stuff like that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right, right. And in doing that, basically kind of put people back into a very difficult situation, which I think you can't tell the story of Trump winning on some sort of, like, backlash to the economy without telling the story of how a lot of these protections went away and this spread, this level of nihilism in our politics that you also speak about in this, in this video. Can you expand on, on that dynamic? Because I've, of course, noticed it. And, and I think without nihilism, you don't have Donald Trump again.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that losing, sort of seeing all of this stuff that we could have. Right. Because obviously Covid is a crisis, but so is poverty, so is childcare. All of these things that are leading to people having difficult lives was ripped away. And people just started to think, oh, the people in power don't care. There's nothing we can do. And they started to feel defeated. They started to sort of, first, I argue in my video, you know, party away Their problems. You see the rise, and I sort of chart it through memes of this time of, like, you know, basically retreating into individualism and also just being like, okay, lol, nothing matters. Nothing matters. The world is a joke. We all live in hell. Which is sort of true. But, like, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have solidarity with each other, and, like, we shouldn't exert our collective power. And I worry that that's where we're going again, because people feel so powerless. And I understand why, because the system is so rigged. Right. In so many ways. But I think 2020 is an example of. Of the pressure that we can put, because the media was also putting pressure on the government back then. It was this mass collective pressure to actually hold Trump accountable and to, like, push for these public, you know, this public response. And I do think that we could replicate that mass public pressure.

[Emma Vigeland]

And this also was in conjunction with the Black Lives Matter protest too, right? Which was a demonstration of collective action, at least in the streets, even though we didn't have the organizational, I don't know, density or mechanisms to do what we needed to do to reform policing and to. Or overhaul it. But that these two kind of planks of 2020 being this collective experience of the. Of the beginning of the pandemic and the protests for black lives, that how they. How did those two things fit together and how did they inform the political moment that we're in right now?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Well, we saw. What we saw is this, like, as you said, this record movement. It was Black Lives Matter, but also there was a huge surge in environmentalism, the environmental movement. You saw this collective action against Trump. Labor, you know, labor organizing, like Black Lives Matter was sort of the tip of the iceberg of all of this sort of mass exertion of collective power out in the public, but also online. And that really scared politicians. And so the boot just came down so hard when. When Biden took action, not only did he start attacking or start. Start, like, criminalizing these protests in this really dangerous way, but also trying to regulate the Internet. I talk a lot about this on my YouTube channel. But this is when we started to see these crackdowns in online speech, the TikTok ban, things like the Kids Online Safety act, very poorly named bill, that's basically a censorship bill. All of these other things, efforts to reform Section 230, because they started to realize the collective power that we had on the street and also online. And I think Gaza ended up ultimately just blowing all of this up into, like, even bigger Proportions. Because now we've seen like the real crackdown come even harder on, on speech and on like protests and, and the.

[Emma Vigeland]

Then. So there's this collective thrust in that period. Then the retraction of the social safety net expansions that we talk about. And then we're giving birth to this era of a bit of nihilism too. Like, you had the Gamestop stock thing, but you then have in the, in the years and I think Gaza and the brutality of the genocide on people's phones caused them to think these like, dark thoughts about our government or about what's even possible, like then. And then you also have the rise of the cryptocurrency industry and meme stocks, which is like, like, okay, if I'm not going to be able to, if the government's not going to provide for me, and it seems like nothing's going to get better and we're in this apocalyptic genocide accepting climate catastrophe, catastrophe, hell hole, I might as well get mine while I can. And that is the epitome of the Trump administration. That's what they're doing in practice, but it's also what they engendered in the public.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yes. And that is what I want people to understand because these Democrats especially seem to really be struggling to understand why they lost and how they lost. And it is this like, broader sentiment of like, I hate to say the millennial phrase, like yolo, but it is very like that, like the crypto stuff and just the stuff that you're seeing like, in culture. Right. It is this like deep nihilism and this deep thing of like, I just need to get mine. And especially when you talk to young people, you hear this. I've reported a lot on the rise of like the E commerce scams. And, you know, I've been writing a lot about Only Fans recently. I was talking to an Only Fans worker last night who has been laid off from their job like four times. They've lost like four jobs and they can't. And, you know, service work jobs. And because of all of this sort of broader economic issues and, and they're like, you know what yolo Like, I just. Not that there's nothing wrong with starting Only Fans, but it's like this nihilism of just like, I don't care. I need a get rich quick scheme because nothing is real. And as long as I have money, I have power and control in this country and I can buy my way into health, I can buy my way into safety. The reality is because that nihilism is False. You can't, you're not going to be the crypto billionaire. You're going to lose your money, you know, you're not going to be able to buy your way out of disease. I'm sorry, you have a human body just like everyone else, you know, and, and I just want people to sort of realize that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. And, and you have the, you have the, the flip side of it, right, which is that there's this, this anger that's more productive, but there's nowhere for it to go except for the, the memes that you're talking about, about, you know, jokingly about talking about killing billionaires or world leaders. And that's the positive that I see coming out of this is the anti billionaire sentiment that those same corners of the Democratic Party that you talk about are trying to currently tamp down by making it like it's, it's really housing reform. It's not the billionaires that you should be mad at. Like, I, I, I keep returning to that because there was just a poll that came out and we'll, we'll go through it later about what voters actually respond to. And it's the obvious one.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah, I don't understand how the Democrats, like, they, I don't think they spend time online. But you see these pervasive media and this is what I talk about in my video too. You can, you can sort of read the sentiment, the broad public sentiment through the Internet very effectively, especially through these mass cultural moments and memes. And I think people are realizing, and I talk about this in the video too, like the violence is sanctioned by the government. Like we have witnessed what they've been doing in Gaza. We've witnessed what they've been doing to student protesters. America is a very violent country and the government is actually totally comfortable with violence. It's just when violence is directed in the wrong direction that they have a problem. Right. And so you see this people of people are like, all right, well if violence is okay, then like why can't we, you know, harm the billionaires that are causing us trouble?

[Emma Vigeland]

Health care CEO.

[Taylor Lorenz]

And that's where you're, you are starting to see more of that, right? Like you, the Luigi, the, and just like people taking violence, it feels like the only language that the government speaks. And so they are going to do that because again, they feel like they have no viable path to reforming the political system because they've been shut out by the Democrats and shut up. And the Republicans are selling them sort of a false dream. And so there's Just a lot of disillusion.

[Emma Vigeland]

And lastly, because I know you have to run, Taylor, but like the, the. This is where you also, your reporting is so important is because you are, have a very good kind of sense of the Internet and how that melds into our politics. And you also talk about how 2020 was the year that the almost firewall between the Internet and our politics just broke. And I think that the Democrats were really slow to that. I think even the most centrist consultants would agree. But how, in what manner were they slow to it?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah, they refused to recognize Internet. Biden's entire thing in 2020 was like, the Internet isn't real life. I think of, you know, collectives like TikTok for Biden, which is now Gen Z for Change, a collective of hundreds of very influential, highly influential Gen Z tiktokers that came together to get Biden elected. They were like, look, we don't love him. They're very progressive, but we're going to get him elected. Biden thanked him, said they were essential in turning out the youth vote. By the end of 2023, I think almost all of them had been blacklisted from the White House because they wanted. They were pushing him on things like Covid Gaza, you know, other climate. And, and there was this idea of like, the Internet isn't real life, it's not true. And the Democrats, I would say they know in their hearts this isn't true because they're pushing some of the most dangerous tech legislation today, trying to censor speech on the Internet. And that is one thing that the Democrats have aligned themselves with Trump on very much is censoring online speech. And I have a series on my YouTube channel called Free Speech Fridays where I break down all of this bad tech legislation that we're seeing. But they really do want to control the Internet. Both political parties want to exert ultimate control over speech online because they don't want people protesting, they don't want people organizing. And, and that's a shame. I, I say. I mean, I just had Aiden Walker, who's a researcher on my podcast today talking about the power. The Internet really bursts their bubble. It allows us to challenge the mainstream media narratives, challenge the government, and we need to fight for our civil liberties online. And so I would love to see more people, especially on the left, get involved with those fights because I think a lot of people have been. That sort of slid under the radar. I know tech policy is not like a fun thing to talk about, but it is. People like Richard Blumenthal Mark Warner, these Democrats, Amy Klobuchar that are aligning with the right like people backed by the Heritage foundation to censor speech.

[Emma Vigeland]

Lastly, where do you see this, like what do you see this AI slop stuff doing to our politics? Is it, is it overblown that it's like it's fooling people or is it just like the insurance of the Internet? Like are you concerned about that?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Generally it is the incidentification of the Internet. I think some of it's overblown but I saw actually just I think it was the Daily Wire or PragerU already using AI generated content from that they made of Gazans and people without the before the community note was appended to the tweet people absolutely thought this was real. And so I think yeah, I do. I am sorry. I think it's going to get really bad and I know I don't like to be hyperbolic. I'm generally like pretty conservative about like tech moral panics and I don't think that, you know, I think that we need smart legislation. But I worry that in the midst of all this moral panic about social media and AI, we're allowing the government to pass these broad based sweeping censorship laws that, that not only don't address the fundamental problems with our tech ecosystem, but also censor legitimate speech. And so that's what I think we need to be careful on about the AI stuff.

[Emma Vigeland]

Taylor Lorenz People should follow your work everywhere they can. Bestselling book extremely Online the Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet. Check out the Power User podcast. Check out User Magazine. Check out your YouTube channel for more videos like the one that we previewed today. Taylor, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Can I say one more thing too? Just, I just want to say I really made that I want people to mask. We have a very dangerous new COVID variant hitting the US right now. Covid is not harmless long Covid is real. Disabled people, workers, low income people, people of color are the worst hit with by, by Covid's long term effects. So please mask up. It's solidarity. It's the most basic solidarity that you can do and you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to wear it every two seconds. But please, if you're, if you, if you can, even if you just wear it 20% of the time you're helping to prevent the chain of transmission and helping to prevent the spread of airborne disease. So please.

[Emma Vigeland]

I appreciate that and it's a great reminder, so thank you so much, Taylor. Have a good one. All right.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Thanks for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. All right, folks, with that, we're kind of. Oh, sorry. Oh, there we are. We're gonna wrap up the free part of this program, head into the fun half where we will take your calls and read your IMs. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, Left Reckoning. We had Sandeep Vaheesen on to talk about the public power. We had him, actually, you interviewed him on this program a while ago. And maybe I'll ask for his take on what policymakers should do to, let's say, unshackle the productive capacities of our great nation in a way that they aren't right now. So check that out. Patreon.com I forgot. I had a huge show actually this week. Interviewed Ro Khanna, congressman from California, and also talked with Aaron, AKA Straighter Aid, who is the person who asked Dave Rubin why he won't debate Sam Seder on the whatever podcast. I also heard a little bit about the backstory of that show, which was interesting. I think she described it as the white, fresh and fit. And it's interesting because they have like seven young women like, often like only fans or even like porn stars. And they have to sit without their phones. They're not allowed to have their communication devices and get yelled at by like people like Charlie Kirk about their body counts and stuff like that. So it's interesting looking to the, I guess the new sort of slop that people are eating up these days. So check that out. 7:00 clock Eastern, patreon.com left reckoning.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, do we have Brandon? Bringing him in. We'll read some IMs here. There's Brandon.

[Brandon Sutton]

Hello there I am. Here I am. Hello.

[Emma Vigeland]

Here you are. How you doing, Brandon?

[Brandon Sutton]

I'm doing well. In yourself?

[Emma Vigeland]

I am doing okay. I'm a little stressed, but I can only imagine, yeah, it's for folks that don't know I'm, it's like, you know, two weeks and change until my wedding. And like, so I was off yesterday and I'm just on the phone the whole day. Like I, there's so much stuff to worry about. And it's and at the same time, like I'm doing MSNBC, we're gonna end at 2:30 actually, if people want to check me out on the Katie Tur show. So I'm getting invited. I'm trying to say yes to everything. So it's very much, it's a when it rains, it pours situation.

[Sam Cedar]

You are having an Emotional breakdown.

[Emma Vigeland]

I shouldn't complain too much, but I'm gonna cry into my pillow tonight. And I'm trying not to drink any wine at all, like, for the next few weeks because I'm like, you know, wedding body or whatever, and I don't even have my release. It's really, really horrible. So instead, I'm just ordering a lot of rumors.

[Matt Binder]

Speaking of a guy who had trouble laying off the alcohol.

[Emma Vigeland]

God, I just want my one weekday wine, but I'm denying it to myself. We'll see how long I last, Brandon.

[Sam Cedar]

The proof will be in the pudding.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I'm sure I will understand everything.

[Matt Binder]

That'S happening two weekends from now.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hey, what's happening on your shows?

[Brandon Sutton]

Well, my show slash stream has been going every morning, so I would heavily encourage people to tune in from around 9:00am EST to around 12:00pm EST. You know, I know a lot of people listen to me on their way to work in the morning when they're, like, pretending to work in the morning while, like, the sleep is.

[Emma Vigeland]

I listen to you a little.

[Brandon Sutton]

Their eyes.

[Emma Vigeland]

Like, I want to check if we're. If I'm missing anything for the Majority Reports. So I'll put on a little bit of the discourse in the background before the show.

[Brandon Sutton]

Oh, no. I mean, I. I don't think I'm anywhere near as comprehensive in my coverage as the Majority Report with Sam Cedar. But I like to. You know, I like to mix it up. I think we do a good mix of news and, like, cultural commentary and just, like, diving into the real underbelly of content on the Internet. So definitely check it out. That's the discourse with Brandon Sutton on your favorite streaming platforms. And by that, I Mean Twitch and YouTube. If it's somewhere else, then, and I'm not there.

[Emma Vigeland]

Perfect. We now have Matt Binder. Hello, Matt. Hello.

[Russell]

How are you?

[Emma Vigeland]

What's going on? What?

[Taylor Lorenz]

Huh?

[Matt Binder]

New hairstyle?

[Emma Vigeland]

New hairstyle?

[Russell]

No, this is the same as always. Just maybe I. Maybe I put it the wrong. A different way.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was, like, almost over your eye. It was very 2003 emo. I didn't notice it. Just.

[Russell]

What do you want me to do with it? It's just.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, count yourself blessed. You've got a full head of hair. What's happening over on your shows?

[Russell]

Oh, so on Tuesday night, I had a stream call in. Show people called in. Also, we watched clips from. I know you guys did, too. Jordan Peterson's appearance on the Jubilee.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep. Yep.

[Russell]

Oh, my God.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Russell]

I mean, wow. I mean, if I was. If I was some of those young, young men who, who spoke with him. I would feel like a million bucks having a clip like that on.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Right.

[Russell]

My resume.

[Emma Vigeland]

Unbelievable.

[Matt Binder]

Pretty much every one of them, like, a lot of them made points that I just found kind of like not that interesting and a bit hard to follow and too philosophical.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

But to their credit, the way that they did it was dominant. Dominant performance of a man who clearly has not argued with online atheists for a long time. Because those are people you do not fuck with.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

They are all about the logic. These are people that, like, they read a book about logic and argumentation. Like, I know that because I'm somebody who used to have, like, a Richard Dawkins T shirt. I can't remember the book I read, but it was like, how do. Like, it's something about fallacies. And it's like, okay, you. You train yourself for this type of thing. I prefer the. This sort of style of the two guys we played, which is like, hey, you know the whole thing about how most people believe in God. Do you believe in God? Like that? And he's like, well, oh, gosh, I don't know. I guess I have to run away.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, it was. It was amazing. It was as if. I mean, I guess I'm not shocked that the dude was so arrogant that he didn't prepare anything, but he also. It seems like he didn't even read the email about what they said they were going to present him as because he got so squirrely about being called a Christian. Do people who are faith.

[Russell]

Yeah, they changed the title of the video for him.

[Emma Vigeland]

I know, but, like, if you're of faith who just, like, why can't you just say it? It's that the caginess is so much more harmful to anything he could be doing here than if he just admitted what his religion was.

[Matt Binder]

Well, if he admitted as religious, he would have to say, like, he looks at it from, like, an academic, philosophical way that most people who believe in God who are Christians don't. They don't think like, oh, this is because I need to develop some sort of relationship with the infinite, because we're all going to die at some point. It's because they think there's a God that made them and is going to judge them where they can go to heaven, hell. Jordan Peterson literally does not believe that. Whatever you define believe to believe, Jordan Peterson does not believe.

[Emma Vigeland]

So what is he like? He's culturally Christian. Christian.

[Matt Binder]

He's professionally Christian.

[Brandon Sutton]

I think, like a lot of people, he likes the fact that you can reference Christianity for, like, moral authority. And he also associates Christianity very heavily with, like, Western supremacy. Like, Christianity is a core component of, like, the, you know, Western imperialist project in a lot of places. And so those are the parts of Christianity that he likes. I don't think. Think he is quite so far gone as to not recognize that calling yourself a Christian kind of devalues your opinion in more, like, serious spaces. Because you're coming from, like, a, you know, not a scientific perspective. You're coming from, like, a religious, you know, supernatural perspective.

[Emma Vigeland]

But the whole, like, era of faux intellectualism on the right is over. So maybe just admit that you believe in. In, like, I don't know.

[Matt Binder]

Now it's just like, Russell Brand and Joe Rogan can be like, yeah, I believe in God, too, bro.

[Emma Vigeland]

But it's. Why, like, I mean. Yeah. Also, Ben Shapiro is on the outs because it feels like they're. I mean, the. The Republican base doesn't care about any intellectual veneer anymore.

[Matt Binder]

Pretense.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Like, it's. We're good. They're feeling themselves. All right, guys, we're going to head into the fun half. The number is 646-257-3920. But don't call in yet. I'll let you know when you should. We'll open up the phone lines on the other side. See you there.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Emma, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.

[Donald Trump]

Wait, look.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sam is unpopular.

[Sam Cedar]

I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday.

[Matt Binder]

I feel like you need to take a river. Sam.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yes, please.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm gonna pause you right there.

[Emma Vigeland]

Wait, what?

[Sam Cedar]

You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour, Sushi and poker with poker boys? Tour, sushi and poker with boys? Who was offered a tour?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi and poker with boys.

[Emma Vigeland]

What?

[Sam Cedar]

Tour sushi and poker, Man, Tim's upset. Twerk sushi and poker with boys was offered with twerk, sushi and other. Tony called you fish. Is twerk sushi and poker with two boys, Right? Twerk, sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

We're going to get demonetized.

[Sam Cedar]

I just think that what you did to Tim pool was mean free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it. I think you're responsible.

[Emma Vigeland]

I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the Meltdown here.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Wow.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi. Sorry, I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered twerk.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi and poker with boys. Logic twerk. Sushi and poker with boys. Boy, boy, boy.

[Emma Vigeland]

Twerk.

[Sam Cedar]

I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid. Twerk. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Had this debate 7,000 times.

[Sam Cedar]

A little kid. Think I'm like a little kid.

[Donald Trump]

Little kid.

[Sam Cedar]

Think I'm like a dick. I'm losing my mind.

[Matt Binder]

Some people just don't understand.

[Sam Cedar]

So I'm not trying to be a dip right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's not what we're talking about here, all right?

[Sam Cedar]

It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's real thing.

[Matt Binder]

Real thing.

[Sam Cedar]

Willy wonk. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing.

[Brandon Sutton]

Oh, I think he might be blowing it out of proportion.

[Sam Cedar]

Real thing. That's a real thing.

[Donald Trump]

Let's go, Joey.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi and poker.

[Taylor Lorenz]

Take it easy.

[Sam Cedar]

Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker. Sushi. You don't have a clue list of what's going on live.

[Matt Binder]

YouTube.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sam has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Want to do this show anymore? Anymore? It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's change the subject.

[Emma Vigeland]

Rangers and Knicks are doing great now. Shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

[Matt Binder]

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is a pro killing podcast.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm thinking maybe it's kind of bury the hatchet.

[Emma Vigeland]

Left his best Violet twerk.

[Sam Cedar]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't. The way Emma has cucked all of these people, that's where my heart is.

[Emma Vigeland]

So I wrote my honors thesis about it.

[Donald Trump]

She wrote an honest thesis.

[Emma Vigeland]

I guess I should hand the main.

[Brandon Sutton]

Mic to you now.

[Sam Cedar]

You are to the right of the UNT policy.

[Emma Vigeland]

We already found Israel, dude. Are you against us?

[Sam Cedar]

That's a tough question I haven't answered.

[Donald Trump]

Incredible.

[Sam Cedar]

Theme song.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hi, bumbler. Emma Viglen.

[Sam Cedar]

Absolutely.

[Emma Vigeland]

One of my favorite people, actually. Not just in the game, like, period.